Streetsbrook Childcare

What is it like to attend this early years setting?

Children are welcomed into the setting by warm, kind staff who foster strong, nurturing relationships. This supportive environment helps children feel at ease and excited to explore the range of stimulating, carefully planned activities tailored to their interests and developmental stages. The staff place a strong emphasis on communication and language development. They encourage conversations, sing songs, read stories and deliver engaging phonics sessions. For children who are nonverbal, staff use signing and picture cards to support communication. These strategies help all children develop confidence in their communication skills and make good progress.

Children's emotional well-being is prioritised through thoughtful routines and practices. During registration, staff encourage children to share their feelings, promoting emotional awareness and helping them feel heard and valued. Visual timetables and calming music support smooth transitions throughout the day while positive behaviour is consistently modelled. For example, during a game of scooping and counting pretend ice cream, staff calmly remind children to take turns, teaching cooperation and social skills. As a result, children behave well, show kindness to one another and willingly share resources.

What does the early years setting do well and what does it need to do better?

• Leaders have designed a curriculum that incorporates staff's strengths into the planning process, creating an engaging and effective experience for all children. Staff well-being is prioritised through measures such as a buddy system for new team members and regular staff supervision. This supervision helps identify training needs and provides additional support, ensuring staff feel valued and confident in their roles.
• Leaders and staff regularly reflect on the curriculum and use assessment to guide improvements. They track children's progress and identify areas where changes can enhance learning. For example, after reviewing children's progress in mathematics, leaders and staff adapted the curriculum in this area. Timely assessments and reflections ensure that the curriculum continues to meet the needs of all children, driving continuous improvement in the setting.
• Parents speak highly of the setting and comment on how staff make children feel safe and nurtured. Leaders and staff hold regular parent consultations and promptly implement support strategies, ensuring all children make good progress. The parent representative system allows parents to feel their voices are heard, strengthening communication and developing a strong partnership between home and the setting. This approach helps parents feel involved and connected, creating a positive, collaborative environment for their child's growth and development.
• Children engage in hands-on activities that strengthen their mathematical development. For example, they stack and count cups, and then use pipettes to squirt water into bottles, reinforcing number skills and understanding of volume. Younger children scoop cereal into different-sized containers, helping them grasp concepts of quantity and measurement. Staff guide and support children to explore these mathematical concepts in a fun, engaging way.
• Staff encourage children to take responsibility for tasks and promote their growing independence. For example, children wash their hands, serve their own food at snack times and scrape their plates, which supports their personal self-care skills. However, staff sometimes step in too quickly to complete tasks that children could manage themselves, such as taking off hats and scarves or zipping up their coats. As a result, children do not benefit from all opportunities to further develop their independence.
• Children thrive from a rich set of experiences that actively shape their development. They take part in events like the school marathon, which helps ease their transition by familiarising them with the school. Children enjoy joining in with special days like the 'Polar Express', where staff get into character to take them on a magical journey to the 'North Pole'. These carefully planned events help children learn through experiences, promoting their personal growth.
• Children have ample opportunities for physical development through active play in the outdoor areas and school hall. They race on balance bikes, splash in water play, kick footballs, dig in the sandpit and climb on outdoor equipment. These activities help build coordination, strength and spatial awareness. In the hall, they shout 'shark attack' during a game of 'little fishes', negotiating space around hula hoops and racing to stand in the remaining hoops. This enhances their balance, decision-making and cooperation skills.

What the setting must and should do next

The provider should:

• support children to complete tasks for themselves to help them develop their independence skills even further.